With 2022 finally here, immigration enforcement advocates hope the looming midterm elections might compel the Biden administration to put a kibosh on some of the radical open-border policies that have resulted in the current crisis on the southern border. During FY 2021, nearly 1.7 million apprehensions were made by the Border Patrol along the border – the highest number ever recorded. Critics are attributing this mass increase directly to Joe Biden and his immigration policies.
Mark Krikorian is executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, whose analysts have published a list of immigration-related predictions for the coming year.
"And a lot of [our analysts] are predicting kind of more of the same," Krikorian tells AFN. "One of [them] predicted that the administration is going to try to make it look like they're doing a better job on immigration precisely because of the midterm elections.
"But there's a limit as to how much of that they can actually get away with," he adds.
Among the CIS's other predictions: the Biden administration will use "secretive deportations" to hide the border crisis; Democrats will continue to push for amnesty without acknowledging the costs that it would impose on Social Security and Medicare; and Biden's immigration coalition of amnesty advocates and business groups will fracture.
In Krikorian's opinion, the administration is just too beholden to the radical element of the party to change course.
"To make the kind of changes that are necessary to actually enforce the border is politically impossible for the administration because their most vocal, most hardcore supporters are very radical," he explains. "And they literally do not think the American people have the right to keep anyone out who isn't already a terrorist or something like that."
Consequently, Krikorian doesn't believe Democrats are going to be concerned with the political consequences of those policies heading into the midterms.
Ignoring the crisis
One of the reasons behind that mindset may be the fact that the Left – according to a Texas congressman and Afghanistan war veteran – continues to advance a false narrative of compassion as it attempts to force Americans to accept the millions of illegal aliens pouring over the southern border into the U.S.
Congressman Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) lambasted the Biden migrant policy during a recent appearance on the Fox News Channel.
"We know that hundreds of thousands of people [crossing into the U.S.] have been let loose – sometimes given some sort of notice to reappear, sometimes not. [And] we know from data that approximately 90% of people who come from northern triangle countries do not show up for their court date," said the congressman.
"This is a common myth that the Left tries to put out there and it's not true. The data actually shows recent data from DHS shows about 90% do not show up."
And Crenshaw addressed another myth the Left perpetuates: that it's an act of compassion to take care of people who have a worse life … and to welcome them as they enter the country.
"This is not compassionate," he argued, pointing out to the show host: "You just listed all of these horrible, heart-wrenching news stories that have occurred on the border because human smugglers are trying to escape police … you talk about the human smuggling itself … you talk about the fact that we've lost more people from fentanyl deaths than COVID from ages 18 to 45.
"This is a real crisis in America – and this administration doesn't want to do anything about it."
